


Prophesied

by tielan



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Gen, Humor, Prophecy, Team, Trope: Art Initiates Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-21
Updated: 2019-10-21
Packaged: 2020-12-27 11:10:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21117818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: SG1 arrive on a planet and discover that Daniel's coming was prophesied.





	Prophesied

**Author's Note:**

  * For [magistrate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magistrate/gifts).

> For my [Trope Bingo 2019 Amnesty](https://tielan.dreamwidth.org/1172262.html): Art Initiates Life

_“The blue eyed one will come to our world.”_

The instant Jack O’Neill emerged from the wormhole, he knew it was going to be one of those days.

It was probably the party of Jaffa that gave it away, staring in astonishment at the four travellers who’d emerged from the Stargate in the wooded area.

Jack was exceedingly proud of his team. Within a second, they’d taken stock of the situation and leaped for cover as staff-weapon blasts exploded around them. He hoped he’d get to tell them how proud he was of them later.

He _really_ hoped there’d _be_ a later.

The chatter of Carter’s P-90 indicated that she’d started taking down the enemy. He trusted she was keeping an eye on the chained prisoners whom the Jaffa had been guarding - Carter wasn’t the trigger-happy type.

As he let loose his own brand of trigger-happiness upon the Jaffa guards, he heard the steady shots of Daniel’s beretta. Daniel had limited ammunition, so he knew to make every bullet count. Jack had been surprised to discover Daniel _did_ know how to use a handgun in the early days of SG-1. Archaeological digs - sometimes full of ‘buried treasure’, sometimes full of items of no monetary significance at all - apparently weren’t the safest places on Earth.

But where was Teal’c?

A moment later, the butt end of a staff weapon took him in the back of the head and his concern about his team-mate vanished into foggy unconsciousness.

The fingers on her chin were rough as they twisted her head from side to side, examining her like so much cattle. A few yards away, they were inspecting Daniel just as closely. One of them pulled the ‘SG-1’ badge from Daniel’s arm and looked from it to Daniel and then over to Sam.

The Jaffa grunted something in Goa’uld to his partner before he waved the patch at his partner and they walked away to speak with the other Jaffa. Sam looked at Daniel with raised eyebrows, silently asking him what they’d been saying.

“I think they serve Bastet, Sam. It’s their yearly ‘slave drive’ for human slaves.”

“_Yearly_ slave drive?” Sam asked in a low voice. She glanced around at the ‘ropes’ of slaves crouched down on the sun-dappled ground. Uniformly dark-skinned, they were clad in long linen tunics and trousers with sandalled feet. Their eyes studied the new comers with interest but they were silent – possibly due to fear of the Jaffa that surrounded them.

“Uh…Bastet is reputed to have some…rather exotic past-times for slaves that don’t meet her standards.”

Since his stint as a slave for Yu, Daniel had become a veritable treasure trove of information about the Goa’uld System Lords, their habits, and their history. Some of the information was the kind of stuff Sam would rather not have known.

She was pretty sure that some of the information was the kind of stuff _Daniel_ would rather not have known.

“Great.” Sam glanced over at the prostrate body of the Colonel. From what she could tell, he was just out of it. When they’d captured them, she’d had a few moments to frantically check him over before they dragged her away and chained her up in the queue of slaves crouching in the leaf mould of the forest floor. “What are they waiting for?”

“I’m not sure,” Daniel whispered back. “They might have orders to wait here until someone comes through for them…”

So they weren’t just prisoners, they had an unknown time limit before they’d be moved to another planet. Even better. Sam shook herself. Sarcasm was the province of the Colonel. It appeared that in his absence, she’d taken it upon herself to supply the requisite derision for the state of their affairs.

“Jack’s okay?”

“He might have a concussion, but I think he’s okay. I only had a moment to look at him before they chained me up.”

“Well, Teal’c’s still out there somewhere. He’ll work something out… Crap, Sam…”

The Jaffa were approaching them - specifically approaching Sam. Fear slithered insidiously in her stomach as they hauled her up and unlocked her set of manacles from the others.

“Sam!” Daniel kicked the feet of the nearest Jaffa out from under him and rolled away to avoid the kicks and punches of the others.

“Don’t, Daniel!” She yelled, afraid that he’d get knocked out like the Colonel. “Stop!” She imposed herself between the fists of the Jaffa and Daniel’s body. Thankfully they paused. “Look, I’ll go quietly.”

“Sam…”

“I’ll be okay, Daniel.” Sam ignored the way her heart lurched and indicated the Colonel. “Look after him, okay?”

His hand closed around her arm and he glared at the Jaffa. “Take me instead.” He repeated it in Goa’uld, still clutching her as if she was his lifeline. A Jaffa swung his staff, and Sam flinched away as there was a solid crack of staff meeting jawbone.

“Daniel?” She gripped his wrist with her other hand.

He was feeling along the line of his chin, “It doesn’t hurt much so it’s not dislocated...” He looked up at the Jaffa. “Take me instead of her,” he managed, wincing at the pain of moving his jaw.

The Jaffa looked at Daniel and sneered as Sam tried to get up. She didn’t want Daniel to get hurt any worse than he already was. When he tried to pull her down again, she tried to extricate herself from him. “Daniel, just look after the Colonel. Don’t get into trouble. Please.”

Of course, being Daniel, he wouldn’t let go. They had to beat him off her before they could drag Sam away.

She glimpsed lines of wide-eyed prisoners before she was shoved back down to her hands and knees, the chains of her wrist-restraints biting into her palms where she landed on them. A booted toe edged her face up to meet the disdainful gaze of the Jaffa who was probably in control of the slave-collecting operation. “_Tau’ri_,” he sneered.

“And don’t you forget it,” Sam told him and really hoped he wouldn’t kick her jaw in. They’d separated her from Daniel and the Colonel for a reason - and if the reason was what she thought it was, then they’d want her pretty - at least for a little while.

Her gorge rose and it took an effort to hold herself still and not tremble, but at least the toe went away.

She gritted her teeth as they hauled her up again. Ranks of Jaffa closed around her and she steeled her shoulders as they marched her away from the other prisoners. She would not show fear. She would _not_… Never mind that she was terrified. _Oh God…_

In the middle of a clearing, there was a small squat stone-looking thing with rune-like markings on it. The head Jaffa touched two places on the stone column and it opened up like a four-petalled flower to show…

Sam stared.

Asgard technology. Runes and lines and even the little half-egg controller.

She was shoved down to the ground next to the opened column and the head Jaffa jabbed the firing end of a staff weapon at her and growled, “Fix.”

Relief flooded her, making her giddy. This was definitely better than the situation she’d imagined.

Her only concern was exactly what she was fixing - and why it was broken. She didn’t want something that was going to turn into a bomb. Then, too, if it was an Asgard weapon, maybe it could be turned against the Jaffa - preferably before the Goa’uld turned up?

The staff weapon prodded her shoulder, then moved to point between her thighs. “Fix,” leered the leader.

_Okay, message received!_

Sam glared at him and indicated her hands. “I can’t fix it when my hands are tied.”

A jerk of the head brought another Jaffa over to her. Her ankles were tied together before her hands were released, presumably to ensure she couldn’t run with her hands free. Not that she would. Only someone who was plumb crazy or plain stupid would run with this many staff weapons and zat guns around. Why give them a reason to get trigger happy?

She studied the device for a few seconds, trying to work it out based on her memories of the other Asgard technologies she’d worked with. It was similar enough to be familiar, but different enough to be a challenge.

And Sam always enjoyed a challenge.

Even when she was being held prisoner for it.

She set to work.

The natives were staring at him.

Daniel shifted uncomfortably and felt the eyes upon him as the lone stranger in their group. He hoped it was just the difference in coloring that had them watching him with such intensity, because he didn’t know what else it could be. And while some dropped their gazes when he met their eyes, most didn’t. They just continued to stare at his every restless shift and shuffle.

It had been over an hour since they took Sam away. God, he hoped she was okay! There was no reason to believe they’d taken her away to…to… Daniel pushed the thought away. But there was no reason _not_ to believe they’d taken her away for...

He hadn’t heard anything – but then, they might have stuck something over her mouth so she couldn’t scream. And enough men could hold down a woman to make any effort she put up against them pointless.

He fought against the rising of his gorge. _Please, no. Please, please, please, please, please not that..._

It was a litany he’d been fighting against for the last hour – and it was getting harder.

There’d been no sign of Teal’c at all – again, that wasn’t a comfort. There were few things that the faithful Jaffa hated more than the _shol’va_ – the traitor who had started a revolution among their own kind, betraying everything they stood for.

If Sam was missing after being dragged away, then Teal’c was probably dead.

And at some moment pretty soon, Jack would wake up and find only Daniel left of his team-mates.

Yeah, Daniel wasn’t looking forward to that conversation.

In the last hour, he’d edged his way over to Jack’s side, gently pulling the line of slaves in which he was chained across with him. He’d quietly checked his friend out, just to be sure that Jack was okay. Or at least as okay as you got after someone knocked you out. It was hard to tell exactly where they’d hit Jack - Daniel couldn’t find any signs of bleeding or bruising - but the pulse was regular, the breathing was deep and his pupils seemed okay when Daniel checked them.

_Thank God you’ve got a tough skull, Jack._ He thought as he glanced up and found one of the Jaffa watching him. He met the gaze neutrally, no challenges, no cowering. They were SG-1 and they were a force to be reckoned with under all circumstances.

But when Jack groaned, Daniel yanked his gaze away. “Easy there, Jack.”

One eye opened cautiously, then shut again. “Daniel?”

“You were expecting Apophis?”

“Funny.” Jack winced and began lifting his hands to his forehead then paused. “Daniel.”

“Yes?”

“What do I have on my wrists.”

“Er…they’re called ‘chains’, Jack.”

“So I guess we’re not in a good situation, then?”

“No.”

“Peachy.” Jack didn’t open his eyes. “Where’s Carter and Teal’c?”

“Uh…I don’t know where Teal’c is…” Daniel tried to think of a tactful way to explain how they’d taken Sam away. He didn’t think fast enough to placate Jack.

“Daniel. Where’s Carter?” There was a steely note in the Colonel’s voice.

“They took her away.”

The only thing which would have gotten Jack up faster would have been the prospect of Goa’ulding. He sat up so fast, he nearly bumped heads with Daniel. “They _what_? When?”

“About an hour ago.” Daniel tried not to meet Jack’s eyes.

“An _hour_ ago?”

“Hey, I tried to stop them…” Daniel snapped. “I’ve been worried, Jack! About her, about you, about Teal’c.”

Jack stuck his head in his hands, “I have a headache. They took Carter?”

“They probably hit you in the head to knock you out. And yes, they took her away. I haven’t...heard anything...”

Please God they hadn’t done anything like that to her.

Jack let that pass. Which was a good thing – at least as far as Daniel’s skin was concerned. “And there’s been no sign of Teal’c?”

“None. It’s probably good. From what I’ve heard, we got caught by a slave convoy for Bastet. They’d make short work of him. And if he’s around, then he’ll be able to see the co-ordinates of where they take us.”

“Daniel, they won’t be taking us anywhere, because we’re going to escape long before any of that happens! Okay?” Jack ran his hands through his hair, knocking off his cap. “I could really do with an aspirin right about now.” He moaned, and the muscles of his neck quivered briefly as he tensed and forced himself to relax. “All right. Which way did they take Carter?”

Behind him, the next slave in Jack’s chain picked up the cap, turning it over in his hands and studying it with interest.

“Uh...over that way,” Daniel pointed away from the Stargate and down the rough woodland path where they’d taken Sam.

Daniel glanced from the slave to Jack, back to the slave again. It didn’t look like Jack had noticed the loss of his beloved cap just yet, but considering the mood he was presently in, he’d want it back.

Daniel was just about to ask the slave to hand the cap back, when shadows loomed over them.

“Now that’s _really_ bad news,” Jack grumped as he glared up at the Jaffa. “Whaddya want?”

_Bad as a bear with a…hah, yes, a sore head…_ Daniel thought but just looked up. “Hi there. Can we have our friend back?”

“Yeah, and while we’re at it, our weapons would be good, too…”

The Jaffa ignored their mutters, unchaining them from the other prisoners and hauling them along. Jack looked like he might rebel for a few moments before deciding against it and Daniel breathed a bit easier. He really didn’t want to see Jack clubbed for venting his anger on the Jaffa.

Jack stumbled along the way - Daniel gathered that the headache wasn’t helping the other man any. With a nervous glance at their captors, he ducked under Jack’s arm, supporting him. Naturally, Jack protested.

“Shut up, Jack.” Daniel wasn’t in a mood to take shit right now - even from Jack. Especially from Jack.

Hauled into a clearing, the reason for their presence abruptly became evident. Sam was sitting in the middle of the glade, working on…

_Asgard technology?_

She glanced up as they were kicked to their knees. “Hey guys.”

“Carter. Good to see you’re okay.” Jack sounded like he was wincing - probably his knee had just given out again.

“Sam, you oka-ow!” Daniel yelped as a staff weapon stabbed him in the kidneys. He shut up.

“Better than you, obviously,” she said, glancing up at them but never stopping in her work. “They haven’t done anything to me yet, but if I don’t get this thing working then I don’t know how lenient they’re going to be.” Her tone of voice was grim.

“Looks Asgard,” Jack said.

“It probably is,” she responded. “I’m hoping…” One hand moved the half-egg across a pattern of runes, then moved it back again. “They think it’s a weapon of some kind and they want to activate it.”

“Is it?”

“Well, I never really got a chance to _study_ the Asgard technology, sir. Thor more or less instructed me as to what went where.” She tried another sequence of runes with the half-egg, then glanced up.

Distantly, they could hear the Stargate starting up.

“Crap,” Jack muttered.

The leader of the Jaffa barked an order to his men and headed for the Stargate. Four remained behind, two with their weapons at ease while the other two had theirs pointed at the three prisoners.

Too many set too far apart to try to take out.

And they were about to become the captured prisoners of Bastet.

Daniel tried not to think about the bits and pieces he’d learned about Bastet while at the System Lords’ Summit. Beheading was just the last thing Bastet had done to Sobek before she had his head mounted in her trophy room in Mubastas. She was well-named for the cat-headed goddess she represented: she played with her victims before she killed them.

It was a small relief that Teal’c was free. Maybe he would be able to see where they went – but then what if Bastet took them to an interim planet before heading back to Mubastas?

He sighed. There was nothing he could do about their capture. The best thing was just to deal with things as they came.

Armoured feet clanked through the forest and Daniel spotted a group of Jaffa coming their way.

“No Bastet?”

“She probably doesn’t oversee every slave shipment herself,” Daniel reasoned.

“A-ha!” Sam exclaimed, causing all heads to turn towards her. She moved the half-egg in a star-shaped pattern, and the little stone column began to glow.

“Uh...Carter, I think it might be a good thing to move away from there right now!”

She glanced over at them, almost surprisingly unworried by the glowing of the column. “I think it’s all right, sir...”

“Well, I don’t! Get over here now, or...”

A shockwave rippled through the glade, blasting outwards from the short stone pylon. Daniel felt a faint tingle run through his body before it vanished, moving in an ever-expanding circle through the glade.

And where it touched the Jaffa, they vanished. Looking back from where they had come, Daniel watched as the ‘wave’ of light ‘dissolved’ the Jaffa all along the path and felt the easing of the tension in his chest. They’d be okay. Thank God.

“Way to go, Carter!”

She sat back on her haunches, evidently relieved by the results of her work.

The abject relief in her posture prompted Daniel to ask a question. “You weren’t sure?”

“I thought it might be something like the Hammer of Thor on Cimmeria, but I don’t know the Asgard language, so I couldn’t be sure.” She looked a little abashed, having risked their lives – and possible Asgard technology - on a guess. “Sir...about Teal’c...”

Jack grimaced. “How far do you think this thing reaches?”

She shrugged, “It would make good sense for the device to have a wide enough range to reach the Stargate...”

“So quite a distance.” Jack muttered. “Maybe he was out of range.”

They could hope at least. “Can you turn it off?” Daniel asked.

A few manipulations of the half-egg and the glow stopped.

“Well, it ended up good,” Jack reassured her. He tried to get to his feet then apparently realised something else. “Except for the bit where we’re still all chained up.”

And Daniel realised something else. “And the keys vanished along with the Jaffa...”

Sam hauled herself to her feet, wincing as her stiff muscles protested. “Uh, if we can find our packs – or if you have something long and thin and made of metal, I might be able to pick the locks.”

Jack eyed her. “You still haven’t explained where you learned to do that.”

The smile she gave them was tired but deliberately chosen to be mysterious. “A girl has to keep _some_ secrets, Colonel.”

_“He will set the slaves free.”_

Daniel had a rapt audience around him.

A sea of freed slaves watched his every move as he talked softly to one of the men – the one still wearing Jack’s cap. Jack had asked for it back, but the man had been reluctant to give it back. Jack had muttered under his breath and resolved to try again later.

Instead, he watched Carter as she inserted the lock-pick into the keyhole and probed delicately for the catch. There was a faint metallic scraping noise, then a click.

The manacles on the last of the slaves fell to the ground with a dull clank and the man began rubbing his chafed wrists. “There you go!” Jack clapped the man on the back, gently pushing him towards the rest of his people.

The man bobbed gratefully. “_Kamarad masiyah, grachez_.”

Jack had no idea what the words were, but they seemed to be some kind of ritual greeting or blessing. One and all, every slave had said the same thing to either he or Carter as they were released.

Then they went across the clearing to where Daniel was sitting. It wasn’t as if he was telling stories or putting on a show, but the natives seemed to have this thing about Daniel. It was creepy.

Carter nodded at him as she sat back on her haunches tiredly and glanced over at Jack. “All done, sir.”

“Good work, Carter.” He offered her a water bottle. They’d found their supplies among the Jaffa possessions left behind and collected them up again. As the slaves were released one by one, they began looting whatever the Jaffa had taken from them. Some scuffles had broken out, but they’d been settled relatively amicably.

She took a long drink of water – the weather here was a little warmer than the weather back home - and stared at Daniel’s congregation. A faint smile crossed her face as she regarded the collection of dark-skinned people gathered around the pale-skinned archaeologist. “I think they like Daniel, sir.”

“No kidding,” Jack snorted, amused. Sure, they were used to Daniel getting a lot of attention on inhabited planets - mostly from adoring native women - but these people seemed to think he was the best thing since sliced bread…assuming that these people had ever _had_ sliced bread, of course. “Do you think these people have…er…homes to go to?”

“It’s possible the Jaffa destroyed their village when they came to take slaves.”

“Then wouldn’t they be worried about their families?”

She paused, only just realising what Jack was alluding to. “I’d expect so, sir.” A frown marred her forehead. “That’s strange.”

“I can think of other words for it, but ‘strange’ will do,” Jack said.

He got to his feet and went on over to Daniel. They’d have to do something with these people - even if only setting up a search party to look for Teal’c.

In the hours since Bastet’s Jaffa had...dissolved, they’d neither seen nor heard any sign of him. Hailing him on the radio produced nothing at all – and if Teal’c had been alive, he’d have answered them back. Jack frowned; such thoughts only led to depressing conclusions. There could be very good reasons for why Teal’c wasn’t responding; he might have dropped his radio. Or something.

That was part of the reason why Jack had taken up station near Carter. She’d worked out how to get the Asgard technology working and, as such, Teal’c’s probable death was her fault. Never mind that it was their lives and the lives of the native people against one Jaffa warrior. Jack made sure that she wasn’t depressing herself over the loss. _If_ Teal’c was dead, Jack would grieve. But until he knew for sure, he had other things to attend to.

“Daniel!” He interrupted whatever explanation Daniel was giving these people. “Have you found out where these people are from?”

“Uh...they seem to live in a village a few miles away, Jack. The Jaffa attacked their village and rounded them up and they were marched to the Stargate.”

“So why aren’t they desperate to get back to their village and find out if their people are alive or dead?”

Daniel blinked, “Well, maybe the Jaffa didn’t hurt anyone.”

“And maybe the Goa’uld are really just misunderstood, Daniel.” Jack was a touch annoyed with his team-mate. And a touch annoyed with these people, too. If his village, town, or city had been invaded by people who took away the young and the healthy, then he’d be furious. If they’d injured his family or friends in the process, then he’d want to get back there as soon as possible and see for himself that the people he cared about weren’t injured or hurt.

Of course, the Goa’uld hadn’t invaded his village, they hadn’t taken away his children, and they mostly hadn’t injured his family and friends – nothing that wouldn’t heal.

But he really just wanted these people off his hands so he and the others could start looking for Teal’c.

“Daniel, round them up. We’re taking them back to their village and keeping an eye out for Teal’c along the way.”

“Jack, if Teal’c really was...dissolved by the Asgard weapon, then there probably won’t be anything to find.”

“Maybe not,” Jack said grimly. “But we can still look, can’t we?”

Daniel opened his mouth to protest and Jack regarded him sternly. “Round them up, Daniel.”

Daniel turned back to the crowds of people and said something in a language that sounded vaguely familiar to Jack – just not quite right. The crowd listened and nodded and began to get up. Like the action of all crowds, it happened slowly.

He gave a mental shrug and turned back to go and get his pack. They had no idea how long it had taken the Jaffa to march these people here – although it couldn’t have been more than a day. It didn’t look like the Jaffa had been carrying supplies with them, only the prisoners. And, assuming they were going to Bastet for her ‘entertainment’ she’d probably want them in reasonably good condition – not half-dead.

Carter was still sitting where she’d been, her back up against the tree, water bottle in her lap. “Could you ask Daniel for the anaesthetic cream, sir? He tucked it in his pocket earlier.”

Jack’s eyebrows rose. She hadn’t said anything about getting injured – but Carter was legendary for keeping a stiff-upper-lip. “What did you do to yourself, Carter?”

She held up her hand, showing him the small red welts on her hands. “Blisters, sir. From the lock pick.”

He grimaced and mentally shook his head. She could have said something when her fingers started to hurt. “Ouch. Want help to get your pack on?”

A quick smile of relief and gratitude was his reward. “If you don’t mind…”

As he eased the pack onto her shoulders, he glanced over to where a sea of natives were standing, brushing each other off with words and laughter. Daniel was still talking to them, and it seemed that they were still listening.

_Huh. They must count patience a really big virtue._

Some time later, they were all on their way towards the village. Daniel was the one leading the procession, Jack and Carter bringing up the rear.

Prying Daniel away from the natives had proved to be more trouble than it was worth - and not because Daniel wanted to stick around and talk. The natives _really_ seemed to have a thing for Daniel. There were always at least a dozen around him – talking to him, trying to engage his attention, patting him on the hair or brushing by his arm. Jack had even spotted a couple of flirtatious glances in his team-mate’s direction by several of the young women.

“See the one with the curls, Carter?” Jack tapped her on the shoulder and indicated the woman in question. “She’s got it real bad.”

She smiled, but the expression was a little wan. “They all seem to have it ‘real bad’ for him, sir.”

“Ya think?” Jack shook his head. “Carter, I’ve never yet dared to ask this, but...from a woman’s point of view, what’s so great about Daniel?”

To her credit she didn’t laugh at him, but the corners of her mouth turned up impishly. “Feel like you’re missing out, sir?”

“Maybe.” Okay, so it was a bit depressing to be reminded that he was getting old - that there was now more white and silver in his hair than brown. And Daniel seemed to get most of the attention these days. Not that Jack seriously wanted attention from alien women - but his ego could do with a little stroking, even if the rest of him didn’t get much action these days.

Carter just smiled and kept walking.

She was getting her own share of admiring looks from the men, Jack noticed. As usual. He glared at one or two who looked like they might be getting the wrong idea and they trotted away. Meanwhile, Carter was completely oblivious to them. As usual.

He shook his head and kept walking, letting his thoughts drift towards the missing fourth member of his team. Damn, but he hoped that some freak of Asgard technology had preserved Teal’c. Or that Teal’c had been a long, long way away when the dissolving-thingy happened.

Absently, he kept an eye on the thinning forest around them. Usually, he would have trusted Teal’c to also keep an eye on the terrain since both Daniel and Carter could get too caught up in their goals to really notice where they were going. Except that Teal’c wasn’t here.

Jack had vague notions of how they were going to look for Teal’c. Get these people home first, then see if gratitude at being freed – and they seemed to be happy enough to be going home, even if they didn’t seem particularly distressed at having been taken from there in the first place – was enough to set up a couple of search parties to look for a guy you really couldn’t possibly miss.

The land had taken a slight incline – Jack had no idea who was actually leading them; presumably Daniel had some idea because Jack had none. And Jack was finding it hard going. His knee still ached a little from the hard, cold ground. He gritted his teeth and persevered, looking around him to take his attention elsewhere.

One of the young men – barely out of his adolescence – was trying to get his attention. “_Kamarad masiyah_.”

“Uh…” Jack glanced over at Carter who smirked at his discomfort. “Hey there.”

“_Kamarad masiyah_.” The boy-man grinned at Jack.

“I think he’s got a ‘thing’ for you, sir,” Carter said, the corners of her mouth turning up.

He ignored her, looking over at the boy and trying to work out what the kid was doing. He was in his mid-to-late teens – maybe as old as twenty. Too old to take as a hero – or so Jack hoped. He was hardly the kind of material any parent would want their kid to take as an example of how to grow up.

And look where having Jack O’Neill as a hero had gotten Ska’ara.

Still, there wasn’t much harm in being friendly. Goodwill and all. And Jack genuinely liked kids.

“Hey.”

“Hey.” The kid’s eyes twinkled up at Jack – he was maybe a few inches shorter than Jack – and he spoke in a rapid stream of words which made Jack blink twice.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t get that,” Jack said, more for his benefit than for the kid. He didn’t understand the kid and the kid probably didn’t understand him. “You’ll probably have to wait until Daniel up there stops translating whatever it is he’s translating and starts translating you.” He glanced ahead, “Although, judging from the look of things, you’re going to get any time with him for a while. All your friends seem to want to talk to him. And I have no idea why.”

A muffled snort over from Carter alerted him to the fact that the conversation was pretty much a monologue. He glared at her and she looked away, still smiling.

The kid paced him as they emerged from the forest to scrubby moor-like terrain that stretched away under a purplish-black sky that promised rain not too far into the future.

Jack glanced over the countryside, noting the farms and the herds running over the hills. The signs of civilisation meant that they were probably fairly near a village or town...

The bare feet of the natives picked up pace as they began to descend into the valley, and the chatter of an alien tongue turned into cries and cheers. At first it was a slow trickle, before it swelled to a steady stream and then became a flood of people flowing down the hill towards the farms below.

The native boy tugged on Jack’s arm, half-hauling him along in his enthusiasm. “Hey!” Jack protested as he found himself dragged several yards along. He planted his feet and the boy’s grasp slipped on his arm. A yard on, the boy turned, surprised at having lost his ‘captive’. “Where are you taking me?”

“_Domus_,” the boy pointed down to the village. “_Domus meia_.”

“I...er...don’t think they’re going to give us much choice,” Carter said a little further over where a young man and a young woman were urging her on. She tugged herself free of them and came towards him.

“Yeah, I kinda noticed that myself.”

“Daniel’s down there somewhere,” Carter added, squinting at the sea of people picking their way down the hill. Jack craned his neck and, after a minute, spotted Daniel being hauled along by not three, but four natives. “We’d have to go fetch him back anyway…”

“Assuming he _wants_ to be fetched back,” Jack grumbled.

“He hasn’t done that for a while, sir.”

“Still does it too often for my liking… Look, will you _stop_ that?” He demanded of the kid who’d taken hold of his arm and was trying to pull him away again. The boy grinned and stood there, waiting. Jack sighed. “I was going to ask for some help locating Teal’c anyway.”

She winced at the mention of Teal’c, but it soon turned into a grimace as one of her natives started tugging on her arm again. “I think they’re getting a little impatient with us...”

“Ya think?” Jack shook his head. “Okay, we’re going, we’re going!” The kid was practically bouncing up and down in eagerness to be home.

Personally, he didn’t see why it was so important to the kid that they came along, but they had to fetch Daniel and find Teal’c anyway...

But he grumbled his way down the slope out of principle, aware that Carter was following behind with a big smirk on her face.

The village looked Greek, all whitewashed stone and bright sun nestled in the verdant green field. The people looked like they came from an African base, all dark skin and eyes and hair and broad grins on their faces. The man tied to the stake in the centre of the ‘marketplace’ even looked like Teal’c.

Sam did a double take.

It _was_ Teal’c.

Unconscious, stripped to the waist, and looking like someone had done a mildly competent job of roughing him up, Teal’c hung limply from the thick pole that was set up in the middle of the square. There were red weals all over his body like they’d whipped him. Sam didn’t want to see his back – she was fairly sure it wouldn’t be pretty.

The Colonel was moving before Sam could get her limbs back online again. She didn’t need to see his face to know he was furious – she certainly didn’t need to hear the tone of his voice as he rapped out, “Daniel, I want to know what the deal is _immediately_.”

Without turning around, he pulled his knife from his belt and began cutting Teal’c’s ropes as Sam crossed to his side, taking inventory of Teal’c’s injuries. Junior was doubtless taking care of Teal’c’s injuries even now, but that didn’t mean that they couldn’t give the primta a hand.

One of the villagers caught her arm and said something urgent to her – not that she understood it at all. She shook his arm off and looked over at Daniel who was trying to find the right language to communicate the problem to the villagers. “We’ll need to lie him down somewhere, Daniel...”

He waved a hand to show he’d heard her, but continued speaking with the headman who’d begun to look alarmed. Maybe the possibility of consequences of having insulted one of the ‘saviours’ of his people was beginning to sink into his skull.

“Carter, you’ll have to get under his other arm. Try not to touch his back.”

Sam eased herself under one powerful shoulder and took Teal’c’s wrist in a firm grip. “Ready, sir.” Another glance over at Daniel showed him and the headman coming over to them. “Daniel?”

“The headman didn’t realise Teal’c was one of us – his people saw Teal’c’s brand and assumed he was a Jaffa.”

“Well, you know what, Daniel? They were _right_.” The Colonel was beyond furious now and into acidic hostility. “He’s also your team-mate!”

“Jack, I explained that to them!”

“Did you explain to them how he needs medical care? Or that we need to get him out of this sun?”

“Well, it’s a little difficult with a very limited vocabulary.” It sounded a lot like Daniel was speaking through gritted teeth and Sam made a mental note to stay out of the crossfire. Friendly fire - especially between her team-mates - wasn’t. “But my understanding is that the house over there is like the local inn--”

“Good, then we can get Teal’c in there,” said the Colonel, cutting Daniel off before anything more could be said. “Carter?”

“Ready to go, sir.” Sam glanced over at Daniel, caught his eye, shook her head ever so slightly to indicate that she didn’t share the Colonel’s ire, then dropped it and helped support Teal’c over to the inn which had been indicated.

The innkeeper was obsequious. He bobbed and bowed and said something that was probably to the effect that his household was at their disposal. At least, that was what Sam guessed. Some things didn’t need translation.

Inside, the inn was nothing to cough at, but they laid Teal’c face-down on the inkeeper’s best bed and Sam and Daniel set about to cleaning him while the Colonel stood at the door and quietly menaced the curious locals away from the room.

It looked worse than it actually was - the blood had streaked and dried as the wounds scabbed over, but it appeared that they’d already started healing - which boded well for a state of _kel no reem_ rather than unconsciousness.

“The lashes aren’t that deep,” Daniel noted.

“They should heal pretty quickly under _kel no reem_.”

“Daniel?” The Colonel’s tone of voice was still cool. “We have someone wanting to speak with you here.”

Sam glanced over at her team-mate as he gave a soft sigh and heaved himself up from the bed. As he went to the door to speak with the headman, the Colonel came over to the bed. “He’s gonna be okay?”

“I think so, sir.”

He stood in silence beside her for a couple of seconds, Daniel’s attempts to find a common language base murmuring through the otherwise still room.

“Jack.”

“Yeah?”

“The headman wants to thank us for rescuing his people from the raiders. Apparently Bastet’s Jaffa come every five years and take the liveliest and best of their young men and women.”

“How do they plan to ‘thank’ us?”

“Once Teal’c’s recovered, they’d like to hold a celebration in our honour.”

“Do they plan to apologise for what they did to Teal’c?”

“Probably, although the headman didn’t explicitly say that.”

The Colonel’s mouth pulled to one side, “I’ll think about it.”

“Jack...”

“Daniel, I said I’ll think about it.”

“You can’t blame them for...”

“Daniel, I’m not assigning blame – it’s not a question of blame. It’s a question of Teal’c with a back that looks more like raw meat than skin!”

Sam ignored the argument between the guys. While the snapping was never comfortable, she’d learned that her team-mates were stubborn, proud men - especially when it came to dealing with each other. It was never wise to get involved between them: they’d argue it out and sulk for a few hours before acting as if the argument had never happened.

_Unstoppable object and immoveable force just about sums it up,_ she thought as she spotted what looked like splinters in some half-healed scabs. Gingerly touching it, she barely saw the dark, muscled arm coming at her in a backhanded hit.

The fall to the floor seemed like a long way. Or maybe it was just her head, dizzy with the blow. In slow-motion, the Colonel and Daniel looked almost comical in their stand-off, their heads turning as her motion snagged their eyes. Not until her tailbone connected with the floor and she sprawled inelegantly across hard wood did time resume its regular course. Sam grimaced up at her team-mates from her prone position, managing to keep her head from hitting the ground, but aware of the ache across her cheekbone.

Daniel was down beside her in an instant, “Sam? You okay?”

The Colonel crouched down to touch her shoulder briefly, then moved around her to reach the bed where Teal’c was blinking in astonishment.

“Hey! Easy there, big fella...”

“O’Neill...” Teal’c frowned and looked around them, taking stock of his surroundings. “We are not...” He stared at Jack, then down at Sam and Daniel on the floor. “I do not...” then he blinked and a formal rigidity crossed his face. “Major Carter.”

She hauled herself to her feet, leaning heavily on Daniel and clutching at the lump on her head. “It’s okay, Teal’c.” She told him, trying to be good-natured about it as her head throbbed - the fall had precipitated a slight headache. “I should have known better.”

The same thing could be seen from time to time in the infirmary. A soldier, brought into the infirmary while unconscious, didn’t always know they were in a safe place and sometimes caused considerable havoc before they could persuade him he was safe. Although, after one such incident while SG-1 was going through their post-gate checkup, the Colonel had quipped that _he_ wasn’t sure that Janet _wasn’t_ about to perform cruel and unusual tests on them.

Daniel sat her down on the edge of the bed and tilted her face to better see the already-forming bruise. “Nice.”

Sam batted his hand away. “I’m fine, Daniel. Ow! Don’t…” She glared at him and he held his hands up in good-natured defence. “Teal’c?”

“I am well, Major Carter. My symbiote has healed much of the damage to my body.” He looked at the Colonel. “Are we prisoners?”

Colonel O’Neill rolled his eyes. “No, actually, we’re heroes. Or something. You sure you’re okay?”

“I am fine, O’Neill. For what reason are we heroes?”

“Uh, well, Bastet’s Jaffa were making slaves of the natives.”

“We interrupted their yearly slave fair. Carter did some funky stuff with an Asgard device, the Jaffa disappeared, these people dragged us here, we found you beaten up. What happened?”

Sam was hearing the conversation distantly, hearing only the deep resonance of Teal’c’s voice and not the words he was speaking. The room seemed to be gradually fading around her, a foggy black mist drawing close, like an insulating layer between her and the world.

“Whoa! Carter!”

And the Colonel’s voice was the last thing she heard for a while.

Major Carter woke up before the dinner began.

It eased O’Neill’s concern that he and Daniel Jackson might have had to attend the prepared feast without them - as well as Teal’c’s own concern that his swipe at Major Carter had been injurious to her health.

Upon waking, she refused any assistance that Daniel Jackson tried to give her, and answered O’Neill’s queries with equanimity and Teal’c’s concern with confidence. Possibly it was an act, but Major Carter was well aware of the consequences should she not take adequate care of herself and fail at a time when her team-mates needed her.

“You’re sure, Carter?”

“Yes, sir.” She smiled, a little tiredly. “I just haven’t had anything to eat since breakfast.”

O’Neill rolled his eyes. “Okay. Well, the feast they’re setting up out there looks like it’ll provide you with enough food for a week.”

She eased herself off the bed, leaning over to retie her bootlaces. “Big, sir?”

“Think of Aunty Mabel’s potluck lunches,” O’Neill said expansively. “Then quadruple it and add what looks like a roast buffalo to the table...”

Her mouth twitched, “That much?”

“Oh yeah. Daniel’s just hopping to get into the local grub.”

“Jack...”

Major Carter headed off the start of yet another exchange by interrupting them both. “Teal’c, has your back healed?”

He inclined his head to her, “It has, Major Carter.” The wounds were already half-healed thanks to his primta. Unlike the bruise that stood out lividly across her cheekbone.

“Go Junior.” She smiled briefly as she stood up and gestured to the door, indicating that her team mates should precede her.

“Uh...Sam...” Daniel Jackson tapped his finger on his cheekbone then pointed to her face.

Bewildered, she lifted her hand to her cheek and winced when she encountered the bruised flesh there.

“Got any makeup, Carter?”

She shot O’Neill a grim look and he took a step back and raised his hands in mock surrender. “I’m afraid I don’t usually carry it about for these kinds of emergencies, sir.” Her hands came up and she gently began navigating the area across her cheekbone and eye socket with her fingertips. The occasional hiss indicated that she’d found a point that was a little more sore than the others, but for the most part what she found was acceptable.

Her gaze met his and she shook her head. “It’s not your fault, Teal’c. I should know better than to interrupt the slumber of a man who’s just been in trauma.”

“I am truly sorry, Major Carter.”

She smiled. “It’s done. It can’t be helped anymore, Teal’c, so don’t worry about it.”

“You don’t want to cover it up or something?”

“Well, I don’t have anything to hide it with, Daniel,” Major Carter said dryly. “So we might as well go down there. It’ll hardly be noticeable in the dark. These people don’t seem to have electric lighting, so it’ll probably just be candles and firelight – and the bruise won’t be too noticeable then.”

“And in the morning?” O’Neill asked.

There was a slightly wicked cast to her face as she said, “Well, in the morning, I’ll just tell them I had a rough night.”

O’Neill blinked. Daniel Jackson flushed. And Teal’c allowed himself a smile as Major Carter grinned openly at her team mates’ expressions. “So,” she said, “Are we joining the party or standing up here all night?”

They made their way out of the room and down to the inn where their guide awaited them. The man seemed curiously exultant, and Teal’c watched him carefully, trying to gain a measure of these people. He had not been given time to observe them properly before they were upon him, too many to fight and beating him down with the farming implements they held in their hands.

His wounds ached a little, and in his belly, the symbiote squirmed slightly, still renewing his flesh and rebuilding his body. He would have to go into deep kel no reem tonight to finish the last of his healing. He had been shaken awake too abruptly for his last meditation to have completed the necessary healing to have his body back to its usual state. And then he had been too concerned for Major Carter’s state of health to return to _kel no reem_.

He glanced at her now. She seemed composed, although the bruise showed dark against her pale skin. The sight sickened him. When he came up from his meditation, his last memory had been of brutality, and he had instinctively responded in kind. Major Carter had been the unfortunate recipient of his fury and Teal’c regretted that he had not taken the moment to take account of his surroundings.

“Don’t apologise, Teal’c.”

Ahead of them, O’Neill glanced back, eyebrows arched.

“Major Carter?”

“You’re sending yourself on a guilt trip for this,” she pointed at the bruise. “Don’t. It happens.”

“It should not have happened.”

She snorted softly and turned to keep walking. “Many things shouldn’t happen, Teal’c. It doesn’t stop them from happening.”

A man – from his clothing, he looked to be the leader of the village - was speaking swiftly at Daniel Jackson whose forehead wrinkled as he tried to keep up and understand what the man was saying as he led them out into the courtyard of the village.

The night was filled with dark-skinned faces, grinning teeth, and torches flaming brightly in the moonless black, and beyond the circles of houses, out in the fields, a bonfire was lit and, if Teal’c stared deeply into the night, he could see the outline of tables and women moving around with what looked like dishes of food.

Indeed a feast.

Another man came up to them, dressed in bright robes of orange and yellow. The fuzz of his short curly hair was presented to their faces as he bowed low. “Honoured guests, we welcome you to our village.”

Their jaws dropped as they realised they understood him, and he grinned at their surprise. “I am Gelven. Many seasons ago I came here through the _chappa’ai_, seeking to escape the gods. I found rest here, made this place my home. I never thought to have to speak their tongue again.” He bowed again.

“Uh, I’m Daniel Jackson. This is Colonel Jack O’Neill, Major Sam Carter, Teal’c of Chulak.”

Gelven nodded at them one by one as they were introduced. “Welcome to our village. We are humbled to have you here – you who have saved our children from being taken by the gods.”

“The gods of which you speak are no gods.” Teal’c could not help himself. He had served for so long, and for so much of it he had known the deity of the Goa’uld to be a lie, but he had served in fear for his life and for the life of first his wife and then his son.

“No, they are not.” Gelven agreed with a sigh. “Yet we cannot stop them from taking the best and brightest of our people every year. This year, they have been stopped and for that we are truly grateful.”

The leader had inched up to them in the meantime, his dark face intently trying to follow the conversation. He jabbered something at Gelven who nodded and murmured something back.

“Takavi, headman of the village, welcomes you among our people and asks that we do not delay in going down to the feast. It has been prepared in your honour.” Gelven’s eyes flickered to Teal’c. “Honoured Jaffa, I wish to apologise for what was done to you.”

In his back, Teal’c felt the last twinges of his beating from this afternoon. “It is a common mistake,” he answered, neither absolving the man of responsibility, nor quite forgiving him.

“It is my mistake. We were not aware of your allegiances, all I saw was the brand you carried on your forehead.” In the torchlight, Gelven suddenly looked strained and tired. “We have had many bad experiences of the Jaffa and we reacted as we would have to any threat against our people. Your friends have since explained that you no longer carry allegiance to the gods.”

“Indeed, I do not.”

“And the thing in your belly has healed you?”

“It continues to do so.”

Gelven heaved a great sigh. “It is well. What we have wrought on its behalf it will heal. But we grieve that you were treated so.”

The headman jabbered something, poking Gelven in the ribs. The translator inclined his head. “Headman Takavi wishes us to get this celebration moving.” A wry smile accompanied his words, “He does not enjoy standing on ceremony.”

“A man after my own heart,” O’Neill declared in a grandiose manner. “Lead the way.”

The headman led them to a bonfire, where tables had been set around in a rough circle around the huge fire. There was quite a bit of bare ground between the bonfire and the tables - certainly enough so the heat of the fire was comfortably warm on their faces.

People moved in and out of the shadows, their dark skin hiding them amidst the night’s blackness. They were most visible in the bright weave of their clothing, and the glint and gleam of metal and ivory jewellery.

The villagers quietened as they came, staring at them with dark eyes, whose whites almost glowed in the firelight. Their interest in his team-mates – and also in him – was not a secret. They stared and pointed, whispered behind their hands as they followed Gelven to the table set for them.

But Teal’c noticed that it was Daniel Jackson who was receiving the brunt of the interest of these people. And his team-mate was getting nervous.

“If this was an academic dinner, I’d ask if I had my shirt on inside-out,” he said, only half joking.

Major Carter smiled. “They do seem to be taking a rather proprietary interest in you, Daniel.”

“It’s that charm of his,” O’Neill said. “Can’t resist it.”

“Oh, you seem to be doing a pretty good job of it so far, Jack.”

A noise came from Major Carter’s direction, swiftly stifled. O’Neill glared at her, “I’m immune. Thank God.”

“Amen to that,” retorted Daniel Jackson.

Another noise from Major Carter. It sounded like a snigger but was, again, quickly stifled as they reached their table.

The first thing Teal’c noticed about it was that there was a lot more decoration on it than on the other tables. It overflowed with flowers along the front and sides, and there were mounds of fruits and nuts, artfully arranged on ceramic platters between the settings.

“Do you get the feeling they’ve pulled out all the stoppers?” O’Neill asked in an undertone.

“Please,” Gelven said, indicating the chairs. “Be seated.”

With a glance at O’Neill, who shrugged, Teal’c seated himself on one side of the table, well aware that his friend would seat himself on the other side, leaving the two middle seats to Major Carter and Daniel Jackson. It was an old habit of the two older warriors, protecting their younger team-mates from potential attack, but it remained, even after five years together.

It was only once they were seated that Teal’c realised the village had been waiting for them. A mass rustle of cloth and the apologetic murmurs of people sitting down followed their motion into the seats.

“Yeah, Jack,” Daniel Jackson answered, not a little drolly, “I’m getting that feeling, too.”

“We did save their children from slavery,” came the quiet comment from Major Carter. She was resting her chin in her hand and looking out over the assembly.

“But this seems like more than just a ‘Thank You and Welcome to the Village’ celebration,” observed Daniel Jackson. A frown appeared between his brows. “Although I think we’re about to find out exactly how effusive things are going to get…”

He shut up as the headman stood up from his chair and gestured for silence.

With all the deliberation of an orator, the man began to speak. His voice carried deep into the night, rising and falling in the cadence of a language Teal’c knew not. Yet there was no mistaking the tone. The headman was speaking powerful, commanding words, words to raise hope and to incite the spirits of the listeners.

“You know, for a guy who doesn’t stand on ceremony, he sure is big on speeches,” O’Neill muttered from the other end of the table. He lifted one shoulder in a brief shrug as Major Carter regarded him with amused reproof in her gaze. “He is!”

“Hang on, Jack,” Daniel Jackson said, “I think…I think they want us to say something.”

And indeed, the headman had turned to regard them. The village in its entirety was looking toward SG-1, evidently in anticipation of something.

“Okay,” O’Neill muttered, “This is weird.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Daniel Jackson raised a hand in greeting. “Hi there!” A glance at O’Neill showed the older man shrugging. It appeared that if their team-mate wished to give greeting speeches, then he was not going to interrupt. Their team-mate climbed to his feet. “Um... It’s good to be here. Thank you for your hospitality. We’re glad we could help you guys out. Um. Thanks.”

There was a moment of silence before Gelven began speaking, translating Daniel Jackson’s words for the crowd.

Gelven finished the translation.

Silence.

Then a mighty roar swelled out of the night – the sound of many people cheering. At first startled by the noise, Teal’c watched the villagers as they raised their hands to punch the air and add their voices to the cacophony – a impressive cry of triumph.

Daniel Jackson blinked – surprised at the response to his brief speech. As speeches went, Teal’c had to concede that this one had not been particular enthusing. But the locals responded to it as if it had been the mightiest of orations.

Strange.

The cheering continued. It continued long past the point at which cheering should have stopped. It appeared that SG-1 and Daniel Jackson’s speech had inspired them somehow. Although precisely how that might be, Teal’c did not know and could not imagine.

“He didn’t say _that_ much,” O’Neill grumbled, miffed at the volume of the response.

Teal’c was watching the crowd carefully. There was more to this ebullience than merely relief at being rescued. “O’Neill, I do not believe their enthusiasm is for Daniel Jackson’s speech alone.”

“I’m getting that, too, sir,” Major Carter murmured.

O’Neill nodded and beckoned the translator over. “Gelven, what’s the deal with all the cheering and clapping and stuff?”

The translator bent down, pausing to look over at his countrymen, then at O’Neill. “They hail the coming of the _Masiyah_.”

The term stuck out, unusual in its intonation, notable for having no equivalent that they could comprehend.

“_Masiyah_?” Major Carter asked?

“Daniel?” O’Neill looked to their linguistically accomplished team-mate for translation.

“Well, they seem to have a Greek-Latin base, judging by what I’ve heard so far, and the term sounds more Greek than Latin...”

Teal’c did not look away from his team-mate. Daniel Jackson was attempting to divert the conversation elsewhere for whatever reasons of his own. The diversion was not working.

“Daniel, just tell us what the word means.”

“Well, I’m not sure what the word means.”

But Daniel Jackson was, if not lying, certainly omitting the truth. Teal’c saw that instantly. So did O’Neill.

“Well, tell us what you _think_ it means.”

“But I could be wrong.”

“Daniel.” O’Neill gritted his teeth. “What. Are. They. Saying?”

Daniel Jackson glanced down at his hands. “Um...”

“Daniel...” Indeed, O’Neill was losing his temper.

“Um...”

“Gelven?” O’Neill turned to the translator, who had been watching their exchange with surprise, but no little amusement. “Please explain this _Masiyah_-thing.”

Gelven blinked, “It is a prophecy that dates back many years. There was a woman who lost her child...”

“What is the prophecy?” Teal’c interrupted. He would take no more of this deviation.

The translator did not appear distressed by Teal’c’s interruption, rather, accepting that they did not wish to hear of the story. “_The blue-eyed one will come to our world. __He will set the slaves free. He will restore the lost. He will open the gateway to other worlds._” His cadencing was formal, the words flowing smoothly and ritually from his tongue.

O’Neill blinked and Teal’c felt his eyebrow rise in query.

And Daniel Jackson flushed.

Major Carter was the first one to make the connection between the unknown word and the language she was familiar with. “Daniel’s the _Messiah_?” The timbre of her voice was rich with amusement, and Daniel Jackson shot her a glare which didn’t abate her humour one bit. The corners of her mouth tipped up and she looked like she was swallowing a laugh.

Gelven nodded. “It has been prophesied.”

SG-1 looked at each other silently, waiting for the joke, until O’Neill, his disbelief evident, finally ventured, “You’re kidding me, right?”

Gelven wasn’t kidding. Daniel only wished he was.

It probably would have been funny if Jack hadn’t been so damned disbelieving. He made it quite clear that the idea of Daniel as Messiah was ridiculous, and the idea of Daniel’s coming being prophecied was even _more_ ridiculous.

Daniel was tempted to proclaim himself Messiah _just_ to annoy Jack. Jack had that effect on him.

Of course, it didn’t really make much difference if he did so – the villagers seemed intent on proclaiming it loudly enough without him joining in. And, by the end of the night, after being stuffed full of food, (Jack really hadn’t been kidding about Aunty Mabel’s potluck lunch plus buffalo, although Daniel was more inclined to think of it as slaughtering the fatted calf,) Daniel would have denied being their Messiah if the opportunity had been given him.

He’d tried. God, he’d tried!

He’d protested that they had it wrong; he wasn’t anyone or anything special.

“You saved our children,” the headman responded immediately. His words were translated by Gelven, who looked intently on, discerning Daniel’s discomfort, but making his partisanship clear. Gelven might not believe in the gods, but he was willing to believe in the Messiah right alongside the locals.

“It wasn’t just me,” Daniel tried to explain.

“But you are the Messiah.” He was the Messiah because he’d saved their children, but he’d saved their children because he was the Messiah. Never mind that SG-1 had originally come here on a completely random mission.

As he was shuffled along to the next wave of locals, Daniel glanced longingly over at the table where SG-1 was sitting, surrounded by their own not-insignificant group of admirers. They were _Kamarad Masiyah_, and so appeared to be being treated with the greatest of consideration and respect.

But it was Daniel who bore the brunt of their interest. He was their Mecca, their Jerusalem, their Nirvana.

He was exhausted.

He’d laid hands on more children than he could count, kissed more cheeks and lips than he cared to think about, and been hugged so many times he wasn’t sure his ribs could take another cracking. His collar was wet with the tears of the old people as they sobbed into his shoulder, and his feet were sore.

Finally, he put up his hands, yelling, “Enough! Enough!”

The villagers – half of the village was still waiting for their ‘Messiah time’ – looked soulfully at him, and he felt his heart sink. On one hand, he wasn’t sure he could take anymore of their treatment. On the other hand, if he disappointed them all, he’d feel like an asshole.

_Shit._

“Gelven?”

“Yes, Daniel Jackson?” The man was rather like Teal’c in the deliberation of his inflection. Or it could just be that Goa’uld was a formal language.

“I can’t do this anymore tonight.” He hated to treat Gelven like a flunkey or an aide, but the truth was that he needed someone from among the locals who was willing to act as an intermediary. And Gelven was the only one who fluently understood the common Goa’uld tongue that was the _lingua franca_ of the Stargate network. “I need a break. I can’t take anymore.”

Gelven followed his gaze across the crowds who still clustered around them. “You are weary?” he asked, before nodding, almost to himself. “Yes, it would be so. You will still be among us tomorrow, there will be time for all.” He raised his arms and spoke to the crowds still amassing around Daniel in the local dialect.

Daniel understood enough of the melded tongues to know that Gelden was telling the crowd that Daniel would see them tomorrow. He waited for the translator to finish. “Is there any way to be sure that the people who missed out tonight get a chance tomorrow?” He flushed, feeling oddly self-conscious in the midst of all the attention.

Gelven nodded. “It is done. Headman Takavi and myself will keep record of those who wish to meet you.”

It would be a long list, Daniel guessed as he began making his way back to the table where his friends sat. It was a slow way. Children were pushed into his path, babies were thrust into his face. More than one young woman pressed against his side in the crush of the multitude, and he felt his face burning at the instinctive physiological response such movements excited in him.

Finally, he made it back to the table, pushing through the people who were jabbering excitedly at them. “Still in one piece?” Sam asked, not hiding her smile.

“Only just,” he replied, accepting the chair offered to him by the youngster who’d appropriated it. As he leaned back, he winced. “I think someone might have cracked a rib.”

She glanced sharply at him, evidently wondering if he was serious or kidding. He grinned at her to show her he was kidding. Mostly.

“So, is there anywhere we can sleep tonight?” Jack demanded from the other side of Carter.

“I think that over half the village would be happy to host us, Jack.”

There was no mistaking Jack’s grimace in the firelight. “Do they have any fields we could pitch our tents in?”

“Fields?” Daniel’s body protested. He had secretly been hoping for a proper bed.

“Don’t want the Messiah to get too used to soft living, Daniel.” The pomposity was definitely intentional. Daniel felt a wash of irritation, sharp and prickly, as he glared at Jack. “Well?”

“Well, what?”

“Ask them!”

“For a field in which to pitch our tents?” Daniel grimaced at the slight rhyme produced by the cadence of his words.

“Yes, Daniel.”

“Why can’t we stay in someone’s spare room?”

“Daniel, the in-fighting that’ll take place before they hammer out where _you’re_ going to sleep will take until dawn at the very least. Do you want to get _any_ sleep tonight?”

Jack had a point. It would have been better made if he hadn’t muttered something into Carter’s shoulder, too soft for Daniel to hear. Daniel eyed them as the corners of Sam’s mouth twitched slightly. They returned back wide-eyed stares of innocence. Sam, in particular, was very good at the clear-eyed gaze of the unsullied ingenue. Even if it was spoiled by her twitching mouth.

“Why don’t you ask Gelven yourself?”

Jack returned a look that said that Daniel was being obtuse, “Because you’re their god, Daniel. It’ll sound much better coming from you.” Which really meant that Jack was being lazy.

Daniel attempted to translate it himself, using what little of the language he’d picked up combined with his own Greek and Latin skills. The people around them hung off his every word – and not because his accent was atrocious and they needed to concentrate to understand him, either. It was unnerving - to say the least.

Gelven nodded when he was finished. “That was good,” he told Daniel in the common tongue. “Very good.”

Daniel shot his team-mates a triumphant look.

Then a fight broke out among the locals as they argued over _whose_ field SG-1 would camp in.

After nearly half an hour of argument, Jack pointed to an empty field just beyond the village’s meeting place and said, “That one. There. I don’t care whose it is. I don’t care what they’re willing to offer us. I don’t care if their sons will be virile and their daughters fertile because of it. I just want to get some sleep. _And_,” he added, with emphasis, “Tell them we’d like some privacy, okay? We camp out in that field, they stay out of it – okay? Make it an order. Edict. Command. Whatever it is Messiahs do.”

Daniel translated as best he could. Gelven added several things to the end of it – a clarification, Daniel thought. He felt a bit like a performing animal at a circus between Jack and his growing irritation – or maybe that was his growing irritatingness – and the villagers and their eagerly intent gazes.

It was at least another fifteen minutes before they extracted themselves from the crowds and closed the gate of the field behind them.

“Tents,” Jack said, terse as he got when he was in a bad temper. “Two for two. Carter, you and Daniel are in one, Teal’c and I are in the other.”

“Any watches, sir?”

Jack glanced over his shoulder at the throng standing just beyond the fence. “Do you want to sit there all night with them watching you, Carter?”

Her mouth quirked, and she helped set up the tent without a further word.

As Sam pulled her pack inside and began setting up her bedrolls, Daniel took a quick peek outside, and saw that the crowds had abated a little. But there were still a lot of people out there. All of them waiting for a glimpse of him. All of them fervently believing that he was their ‘Messiah’ or something.

It was a slightly uncomfortable feeling. Like a prickling against his neck. “I feel like a goldfish in a bowl,” he confessed to Sam as he let the tent flap drop closed.

Sam had a smile on her lips as she half turned towards him. “Maybe that’s because you are?”

Daniel stuck his tongue out at her. It was distinctly juvenile, but he could do that with Sam and not feel embarrassed about it.

They spread out their bedrolls on the floor of the tent. The crushed grass beneath the tent base was soft, and acted as a mattress against the ground. Daniel kicked off his boots and lay down on the bedroll, stretching himself out and trying to relax.

A few feet away, Sam was doing the same.

He concentrated on the sounds of the night around them. The rustle of the crops in the next field. The murmurs of the locals who still stood at the fence. The distant lowing of cattle. Someone who’d just started whistling.

Daniel clenched his teeth. The whistler was piping out ‘Hail to the Chief’ with a jaunty lilt to the rhythm. It could only be Jack. Daniel resolved to pay him back for that. With something _really_ nasty.

Beside him, a vaguely muffled snicker emitted from Sam. She was listening to the whistle, too.

“I heard that,” he muttered in her direction.

He heard the faintest hint of another chuckle, before exhaustion closed over him and he sank into sleep.

_“He will restore the lost.”_

The teasing potential was enormous.

Jack would never, _ever_ let Daniel live this one down.

He might have been more annoyed at Daniel’s sudden elevation to godhood if it wasn’t for the fact that these people were so cheerful about it.

Most people they encountered via the Stargate got very upset when Jack tried to point out that their objects of worship weren’t what they seemed. These people smiled, nodded, patted him on the hand or the shoulder and toddled off.

Daniel was their Messiah. That was all they needed to know.

Jack was mostly worried about what would happen at the end of the day when SG-1 went home, taking the ‘Messiah’ with them. No way was he going to leave Daniel to be adored and worshipped here all the days of his life.

At least a few of the locals were still awake when he climbed out of his tent and sat back on his haunches to survey the town.

It was just a little creepy. They’d obeyed Daniel’s edict - Jack winced at the choice of word but no alternative presented itself - to the letter. As far as the fence but no further. They hadn’t even climbed up to sit on the railing, which Jack thought showed a serious lack of rebellion.

Around here, nobody in the field meant _nobody_ in the field.

In the broad light of day, Jack could see that it was a fallow field. No stock were grazed in here, and no crops presently grew. Instead, the weeds had been allowed in, tufted clumps of green and brownish-green sprouting amidst the dried stubble of the last crop - and the flattened area where SG-1 had unpacked themselves and their tent equipment last night.

Still, if all these people wanted to get their hands on Daniel, then it was going to get crowded around here.

Jack huffed to himself as he began setting up morning camp. First the fire, then the boiled water, then the small one-cup coffee filter that was their salvation from Daniel ‘I-Don’t-Do-Mornings’ Jackson - and, incidentally, also provided Carter and Jack with their morning caffeine shot. They were less fussy than Daniel - anything caffeinated would do them, but filtered coffee was always a bonus.

Carter emerged from her tent with serious bed-head, blonde tufts sticking up willy-nilly. Jack thought she looked rather cute that way, although he’d never have said it to her face, behind her back, or at all. That only got a guy in trouble.

“Morning, sir.”

“Morning, Carter,” he said. “Plans for the day?”

She was looking around at the locals lining the fence. “Other than fighting my way through the villagers, sir? I’d like to study that pillar I activated yesterday.”

“I didn’t get to ask you about that,” Jack noted. “Hammer of Thor equivalent?”

“It must be something like that, sir,” she said. “Although this planet can’t be on the Treaty or else Bastet wouldn’t be collecting slaves from it.”

“Would the Asgard have forgotten it?”

“It’s not like them.” She shrugged, stretching her body this way and that in the morning light. Like him, she kept her eye on the assembled people beyond the fence, not exactly distrustful, just alert for trouble.

They were used to being alert for trouble.

“Well, Daniel’s going to be busy seeing these people today,” Jack said as the water boiled and he poured it into the filter. “So he’ll be here, and you’ll be there which means Teal’c and I get guard duty on you two.”

“Sorry, sir.” Carter pulled her arms over her head and winced.

Jack shrugged, smiling to take the edge off his words. “After five years, we’re used to it, Carter. Part of the deal of having you on the team.” And Jack wouldn’t change that for anything in the universe and beyond. “I thought that you and Teal’c...”

“Uh, sir...”

He realised the problem as she interrupted him. “I get it. We don’t want Teal’c near that thing when you activate it again.” Sometimes he was so used to looking at the forest that he completely forgot about the trees. “Okay, Teal’c stays here with Daniel - and the villagers can make nice after what they did to him yesterday - and I’ll head back to the Stargate with you. We need to contact Hammond anyway.” He glanced at his wristwatch and grimaced. Another three hours before they were due to call in. Judging by the crowds still waking up around the field, it would take them that long to get everything sorted out and arranged.

“It must have a range limit,” Carter mused, crouching down in the grass beside him. “Just the area around the Stargate. It would make sense in terms of keeping the most likely entry point for the Goa’uld covered.”

“But not much good against a flotilla of spaceships.”

“No.” She stared up into the pale blue morning sky with a speculative look.

“Carter?” He knew that look. It meant ‘I wonder if...’ and often preceded one of Carter’s Big Ideas. Of the ‘blowing up a sun’ kind of big.

Her eyes were a few shades darker than the morning sky, but just as bright. They also had a touch of mischief in them as she grinned at him. “Sorry, sir. Just thinking that if the Asgard left the pillar by the Stargate to protect these people from an invasion by Stargate, they might have left something else to protect the planet from space.”

Now _that_ sounded interesting. Difficult to actually check out, but interesting. “Weapons?”

Carter shook her head. “Unlikely.”

“But worth checking out.” Jack was already running through the options in his mind. “I wonder if this place has an astronomy club.”

“An astronomy--?” She took a second to clue in. “Even if they did, sir, we don’t have a ship that could--”

“Ah-ah-ah! We’ll jump over that river when we get to it.” Jack didn’t want to think about the ships they could have had but didn’t. The X-301 for starters, the Goa’uld mothership they’d taken from Cronos... It seemed the universe really didn’t want Earth to gain space capabilities. “In the meantime, I think we should get Daniel up to see his...uh...flock.”

One corner of Carter’s mouth tilted. “His coffee’s nearly ready, too.”

“See? It’s all in the timing.” A completely wicked idea came to Jack as he looked around at the locals lined up along the fence, and brought a smirk to his lips. “So, Carter, how are you when it comes to singing?”

It didn’t take too long to find people in the crowd who had reasonable ears for music. Several of them picked up the refrain with very little trouble. It was just syllables, after all, and the locals might be primitive in technology but they were quite adept linguistically.

Carter stayed to conduct, trying desperately not to laugh and failing miserably as Jack crawled into the tent she’d shared with Daniel.

“Oh, Da-niel...” Jack said in a sing-song voice as the choir started up the chorus. Daniel’s response was to grunt in and turn over. Jack leaned over him. “They’re playing your song, Danny-boy.”

One eyelid lifted to show a glaring blue eye beneath messy brown hair. “Jack, if you taught them that, I’m going to kill you.”

Jack sat back on his haunches, well pleased. “Promises, promises. And Carter did the teaching.”

The exasperated groan from his team-mate made Jack grin even wider. “She’s dead, too.”

Two minutes later, Daniel emerged from his tent to many cheers and the ragged strains of the _Halleljuah Chorus _from Handel’s ‘_Messiah_’.

Daniel gave Jack a look that should have incinerated him on the spot and then stalked over to his ‘flock’ while Sam gave him her best ‘innocent Carter’ look.

“O’Neill.” A large form unfolded itself from the other tent.

“Morning, Teal’c. How’s the back?”

Teal’c came to stand beside him. “It is healing.”

Jack glanced at his friend and found him regarding the locals, quite a few of whom were still trying to sing the chorus. Then Teal’c turned to regard Daniel, who was dividing his attention between retorts at Carter and trying to get Gelven here. Then he turned to Jack with a carefully neutral look. “I should not ask.”

Jack grinned.

Sam asked Gelvren about the pedestal. Even though they'd saved the people who were being taken by the Goa'uld and come in the compay of 'the _masiyah_', Sam figured it was probably best to check that there weren't any taboos around studying or touching it.

"No," said the translator after a moment. "There is no taboo - not exactly - but it is considered unwise to play with the devices of the gods."

"Oh, Carter's always playing with the devices of the gods," the Colonel drawled. "It's kind of her job description."

He was in good spirits after this morning's chorus to Daniel, and the marked cheerfulness didn't abate one jot as they walked back along the trail to the Stargate and the pillar that stood in the middle of the glade. Gelvren had allowed that Sam could go and study the device. There'd been an element of '_so long as you don't touch it_' in his tone as he gave permission, but for the most part he'd seemed okay with it, although that might have been Daniel's slight nod of the head in agreement with Sam's interest.

Frankly, Sam was a little surprised that Daniel hadn't come with them. However, the prospect of a little anthropology - and, moreover, a society that was geared to grant him anything he wished - was more than he could resist. Asgard technology could be found on plenty of planets and innumerable Asgardian warships, but a culture that would answer his questions without reluctance of hesitation? Far, far rarer.

And Teal'c was earning his fair share of adulation and apology. The older adolescents had plenty of questions and fewer inhibitions than their parents, and Teal'c was good with them - authority without cruelty, frank honesty untainted by societal self-interest, and always willing to sow the seeds of revolt against the Goa'uld.

So it was her and the Colonel walking back to the glade accompanied by a number of older children - mostly pre-teens and younger adolescents whom the Colonel had befriended either last night over dinner or this morning over breakfast. They ran ahead and doubled back, brought things for Sam or the Colonel to look at, and played hacky-sack with a small pillow of beans, occasionally involving kicking it at the Colonel or Sam and giggling and cheering when they kicked it back.

"So you think Thor and his buddies might have gone the extra mile here that they didn't on Cimmeria?"

"Actually, sir, I'm wondering if it really was Thor or any of the other Asgard we've met."

"The technology isn't a giveaway?"

"It's more that the situation doesn't seem right for the Asgard. Look, the Asgard usually protect an entire planet through a treaty. The Goa'uld know not to intrude on the planets in the treaty zones, and the Hammer - or other sentinel structure - keeps the Goa'uld from doing quick slave runs onto the planet to take the locals away."

"But this planet isn't in the treaty zone."

"Right. And the sentinel structure is manually activated. And which has been largely forgotten about by the locals. It doesn't fit the parameters of a protected planet." Sam detoured around a dip in the ground that might have just been a slight hollow, but which might also have been a creature's burrow, having to rear back to avoid bumping into one of the girls who'd been walking nearby. "Sorry."

The girl shook her head and said something in a piping voice which Sam thought might mean, "No problem."

"So why is there a sentinel structure at all?"

"It could be that this was the prototype for Cimmeria's labyrinth. They did a test run on this planet."

"And didn't then follow through?"

"Maybe they got caught up in the war with the Replicators? Or didn't come back to this part of the galaxy. It wouldn't be the first time a project started with good intentions and then moved out of the realm of the possible."

The Colonel grimaced. "You know, Carter, I have trouble associating the Asgard with half-assed projects."

"I'm not saying that's the reason. But it's a possibility for why they didn't finish up what they'd started."

"Right." The Colonel's brief grimace dropped as one of the boys kicked the hacky-sack over to him, and he caught it on his boot toe, tossed it to the other foot, then slung it back over to the kids.

"Well done, sir."

"My knees don't think so," he grumbled. "But so long as they don't need me to do it all morning..."

The kids only passed it to him once more, then Sam took her turn at kicking it back when it came their way. She wasn't as controlled with her kicks and the bean bag frequently went a little wide of her mark, to the exasperation of the children. It was a relief to reach the Stargate and the innocuous rock pillar that held the Asgardian technology.

The column looked just as squat and dirty this morning as it had yesterday when the Jaffa dragged her out to activate it. And when she pressed the correct runes for opening the thing, the column opened just the same.

"But no egg controller," Colonel O'Neill observed, then paused as Sam produced it from her pocket.

"I didn't want to leave it here, just in case." She put it into position on the flat, sloped panel inside the pillar and watched the column light up from within. "Frankly, I'm amazed it's been here all this time undisturbed, even if the locals didn't know what it was. At least one of them had to have been curious at some point..."

Sam trailed off. The light inside the column wasn't abating. In fact, it seemed to be growing steadily brighter--

"Uh, Carter, what are you doing?"

"Nothing--" But she moved the controller across the panel, trying to shut down whatever was happening. "I didn't do anything different to last time--"

"Second time unlucky?" The Colonel began shooing the kids away to the tree line - as though that would help if they were about to be transported elsewhere - then came back and took her arm. "Come on, Carter, we're not waiting for it to--"

Sam unhooked herself from his grip. "Sir, I think I can--" She tried to remember the sequences that Thor had shown her on the _O'Neill_ before the Replicators had come for them, what they were supposed to do, what they meant. _Shutdown. Shutdown. The termination sequence--_

There was no time to think; she let her hand do the moving according to instinct and memory--

The world went white and glowing in the space before the Stargate, and darker shadows blotted the landscape, the shimmers of people being transported in. When the light faded, there were maybe a dozen villagers there, some seated, some standing, some swaying on their feet. As Sam and the Colonel looked on, the man nearest to them squinted, took a step forward and fell to his hands and knees on the ground.

Sam hastened around the pedestal. The Colonel was already going to help the man who seemed dazed and confused and terribly thin. In fact, 'dazed, confused, and very weak' about described all the people who'd abruptly appeared in the glade - villagers, maybe? They had the same look about them - skin, clothes, hairstyles...

"Melkhiar?" The voice off to the side was as much of a surprise to Sam as it was to both the Colonel and the man he was helping.

Gelvren was standing at the edge of the forest looking like he'd seen a ghost. Daniel was a few steps ahead of him, one hand still in the act of gesturing the translator back. But Gelvren pushed past him, almost running to the man on his hands and knees - the man who reached up to grab him in what looked very close to a death grip, laughing and crying all at once as they embraced.

The Colonel scrambled back and landed on his butt in the dirt, staring at the two men with some surprise as their mouths met.

Sam blinked, but looked over the others who'd appeared. Some had climbed to their feet, others were looking around them in confusion. They all blinked rapidly, some of them teary-eyed at the brightness, and none of them looked in particularly good condition.

And so far as she could tell, none of them were Goa'uld...

"Taya Tamit?" One of the women started as a girl called out, and then blinked even harder as the girl ventured out to face her, asking something in their native tongue. The woman replied, almost wonderingly, and then the girl flung herself into the woman's arms, so hard that the woman staggered backwards and went down to the ground still holding the child.

Around them, other reunions were taking place, equally fervent and emotional. Even those who didn't have direct family appeared to be known to the others, and the glade rose in a babble of noise and greetings and explanations.

"Daniel?" Colonel O'Neill sounded just on the verge of grumpy. "Would you mind explaining what's going on?"

"Uh, I think...I think that these are people who went missing during the raid on the villages. Or a bit before, actually." Daniel was looking this way and that, like he was trying to find a conversation to latch onto. "Actually, uh, quite a bit longer for some--"

"Months," said Gelvren, lifting his face from his lover. "Some of these people have been lost to us for months - they went missing and we presumed they had been taken by the forest-- It happens sometimes, you know, one gets lost..."

The man he was holding - Melkhiar - said something softly to Gelvren, who checked himself. "Forgive me. But Melkhiar has been lost for nearly a month now - I had despaired of ever seeing him again--" He looked to Daniel, tears streaming down his face. "And you have brought him back to me - you and your companions!"

_He will open the way to other worlds._

If O'Neill had thought that last night's celebration was large, then the lunchtime feast far surpassed that.

Teal'c regarded the food set before him and his team-mates with some bemusement. The villagers were jubilant at the restoration of their lost; nothing was to be spared for the _masiyah_ and his companions! It was with some difficulty that Daniel Jackson managed to persuade them that there was no need to go to any great lengths...

"I think Daniel needed to ask exactly what 'any great lengths' were," Major Carter murmured from beside Teal'c. 

"There is no restraint in joy," Teal'c said, quoting an aphorism that was common among the Jaffa.

Major Carter glanced at him. "At the rate they're going with these celebrations, they'll have nothing to eat come winter. Although I guess they'll have calculated their stores."

"Indeed." Teal'c took several baked vegetables off the platter that one of the village women offered him, and inclined his head in thanks. Beside him, Major Carter took a piece of something that looked like the Tau'ri pumpkin and refused the rest, claiming she wasn't hungry.

"After last night, I don't think I have the space for more food," she admitted. "Even the walk to and from the Stargate wasn't that strenuous."

Fully recovered from his injuries, Teal'c's body was still requiring food as it finished up the last of his healing. So he ate, although not heavily.

Still, he was conscious of the attention of the villagers upon him and Major Carter and O'Neill. They looked upon them with awe and a kind of worship that roused discomfort in Teal'c - there was no great value in exchanging one false god for another, and while SG1 had intended good things to these people, the kind of rapt attention that they were garnering in this instance was awkward.

Nowhere was this clearer than in watching Daniel Jackson, though.

The villagers fawned over him, and his plate was never empty. His attention was desired by everyone - what had O'Neill said last night? Their children fertile and their land productive? And while Teal'c's team-mate valiantly tried to redirect their gratitude to Major Carter, who had been the one fiddling with the "devices of the gods" that had returned their lost family and friends, it was as fruitful as trying to stop a mothership with a hatak. It could be done, but at great cost and exhaustion.

"I've told him just to leave it," O'Neill advised when he came over and Teal'c noted that Daniel Jackson had ceased pushing them to stop hailing him as their savior. "It's not going to get better, God knows it can't get worse. And we'll be leaving soon." He glanced over at Major Carter, who was trying to communicate with one of the adolescent locals who'd emerged from the caves with the others. His family hadn't seemed so glad to see him. In fact, quite some number of the returned looked...not discontented, exactly, but not wholly pleased to be returned.

Or, perhaps, Teal'c thought, they were not pleased to be back in the village again when they had hoped to find themselves elsewhere.

He waited for an opportune interval before asking, "Major Carter? How did the Asgardian transporter take so many people? These persons have been gone since before Bastet's armies came to take slaves; how did they end up trapped in the Asgardian chamber?"

"Well, that's the odd thing, Teal'c. I think they were supposed to be trapped there until someone transported them out." She glanced at the young man who was watching their conversation with a steady-eyed interest. "Nobody has said anything about there being any way out - when they reached the end of the maze, it was just a blank room. No decorations, no designs, nothing that might indicate how they were supposed to leave that place. It's a dead-end."

Something about the way she said it suggested that when she said 'dead-end' she meant it very literally. While everyone brought back had been alive, had there been others who'd been found dead below?

A troubling thought. Teal'c measured the first thought he'd had, then said, simply, "That does not sound typical of the Asgard."

"No. Usually, they're very careful with their technology - one could almost say obsessively so." She dug her fork into some kind of grainmeal. "I got a better look at the technology of the pedestal while they were looking over the returned villagers, and...well, I'm not sure that it's quite what I originally thought it was."

"It is to make people stay here, not to keep people from arriving."

Major Carter blinked, surprised at his conclusion. "Yes. Teal'c, how did you--?"

It was a delicate concordance of thoughts in his head, the way many of the villagers were interacting with the returned - like they were glad to have them back...but not that glad - and the way the returned were interacting with the villagers. The little bits and pieces that he had observed and heard, compared with his experience of villages he had raided, first as a Jaffa in the service of a System Lord and then as the First Prime of Apophis, and contrasted with his experience of the Asgard in the years since he had joined SG1 and the Tauri in their fight against the Goa'uld.

"Many small factors," he said quietly.

"Well, those small factors point to one really big conclusion. Whoever put that device there didn't want the locals to be able to up and leave. I mean, it may have been for their own protection - who knows where a Stargate address leads? But to take them and put them in an underground chamber from which they can't escape just seems...small-minded and petty."

"That does not seem like the Asgard."

"No," she agreed. "It doesn't. My current theory - and I'll have to ask Daniel this - is that this is either a renegade Asgard, or possibly someone who modified their technology - rather like the way we've been modifying Goa'uld technology - but didn't quite understand what they were doing."

Teal'c forebore to point out that the modifications of Goa'uld technology had not always gone so well for the SGC either. There was no need to highlight the matter - both he and Major Carter were very aware of the dangers of incomplete modifications.

"Have you spoken to O'Neill about the possibility that we may not be able to leave?"

"Oh, no, we'll be able to leave," she said firmly. "I disabled the proximity sweep that takes place when the Stargate is being dialled and set it up so it would sweep once the Stargate has been activated from the other side. If it wasn't for the fact that the setup is so complicated, I'd think someone had done it by accident." Then she paused smiled weakly at Teal'c. "I did explain the situation to the Colonel. I'm certain that you'll be okay to go back through the Stargate, but I can't promise that you'd be okay if you ever had to come back. My knowledge of Asgard reprogramming just isn't that good."

"I trust in your knowledge and skill, Major Carter."

She smiled briefly. "Thank you, Teal'c." Her voice dropped so it was barely audible. "Now, let's hope they let us leave when the time comes to it."

Puzzled, Teal'c began to ask why she would think the villagers might not let them leave, then looked over to where Daniel Jackson was sitting in the midst of a cluster of villagers. The term 'holding court' came to mind, although Teal'c knew quite well that his team-mate's nature was not inclined to rule or dominate, although he would talk about his specializations fit to send a _imethip_ into convulsions. And it was not Daniel Jackson's reluctance to leave that concerned Major Carter but the willingness of the villagers to let their savior go...

Food and wine continue to be offered to them but persistently refused. It was not a lack of courtesy to their hosts, simply that there was no space short of expelling the food already eaten and starting over - a practice not unknown in some Goa'uld courts, but one which Teal'c disliked.

Then Gelvren began to make hopeful presumptions about SG1 staying another night.

Teal'c saw O'Neill's head lift, his expression sharp and alarmed before Daniel Jackson negated that.

"I'm sorry, but we have to go. It's been a delight to celebrate with you, but we've got responsibilities to execute back home." He translated into the local argot - a little sketchily, but well enough that they understood he was going home - and the protests rose in a cacophony of distress.

It took them to midafternoon to calm the worst of it and it took all of Daniel Jackson's diplomatic skills to smooth things over.

"We're not leaving you unprotected," he told Gelvren when the translator explained their fears and concerns - not just their '_masiyah_' but also the people who'd protected them, saved them . "Look, Sam, can you show them the shield and what it does?"

They walked back to the Stargate in a great crowd of villagers, the children who'd gone this morning leading the way, many of the returned among them.

Teal'c found that notable, particularly when one of the older adolescents fell into step beside him.

"Jaffa Teal'c, does the _chappa'ai_ truly go everywhere beyond the arc of the sky as _masiyah_ Daniel tells us?"

The consideration of what to say - how much to say - was brief. "It goes to many places, although not everywhere. It is, however, unwise to travel without a guide or knowledge of what lies beyond."

"But if we don't ever leave the villages, then we don't ever learn what's beyond." A hint of bitterness touched the young woman's voice. "And they tell us we should be content with what we have, even if we don't want what they have."

"There are places you may travel - but they are not always safe."

"Anywhere is better." The soft fervency was disturbing. "I would take the unknown over my life in a moment."

As they reach the glade, somewhat behind the others, Teal'c thought of what he had observed of this culture, of the villagers who stay, of those who tried to leave and were thwarted. The internal politics of this village were not his to discern and dissect as Daniel Jackson would, but Teal'c would not hinder anyone seeking freedom from their present life, although he might advise them otherwise.

He did not see the problem with this village - although their perception of the _masiyah _felt uncomfortably like the worship of the Goa'uld - but he did not have to live here among these people. What was it that O'Neill liked to say? _Nice place to visit, but you couldn't get me to live there_.

While Major Carter showed the villagers how to use the pedestal with Daniel Jackson tendering the explanations, Teal'c caught O'Neill's eye as it skimmed across the assembly of people. A lifted brow inquired as to whether all was well, and Teal'c nodded in response. It was well.

But as Major Carter began to make her way towards the DHD, Teal'c caught the eye of the young woman. "Follow her and request the address for Elanan."

Elanan's busy and thriving market culture was once one of a small grouping controlled by a Goa'uld. A Tok'ra operative had recently set herself up as the 'Ruling Lady' after defeating the Goa'uld and taking his holdings, and the careful agreement was that if SGC teams went through in emergencies or desperation, so long as they were brief and were not spotted by the Jaffa guards loyal to their "Goa'ul'd" mistress, they might use it as an interim stop.

The young woman caught her breath, but neatly slipped around the edge of the crowds to join Major Carter, even while Daniel Jackson explained the workings of the pedestal to the locals. Teal'c followed her, more sedately, and as he approached the edge of the crowd around Daniel Jackson', O'Neill pushed his way through.

"Hey T. You might like to stand back a little when we activate the Stargate - in case that thing is still working against Jaffa."

"I have faith in Major Carter's skill."

"So do I," O'Neill said defensively. "That doesn't mean we can't take precautions."

"Jack, 'precautions' would mean Teal'c going back to the village to be sure he's out of range of any Asgardian transportation beam..."

Teal'c interrupted O'Neill's retort. "I am willing to take that risk."

"I'm gonna be so pissed off if we need to rescue you from the cave system," O'Neill muttered. "Fine. Carter, dial it up!"

Major Carter lifted her head from the conversation she was having with the young woman. Her expression was wary, where the villager's was intense, and the look she shot Teal'c suggested she hoped he knew what he was doing. She said something more to the girl, and the girl nodded and flashed her a brief, grateful smile before herding the children away from the stairs up to the Stargate, that they might not get caught in the 'kawoosh'.

Then she started dialling the address home.

Daniel Jackson lifted his arms to get the attention of the crowds. "Uh, if I may have your attention just for a moment--" Behind him, the _chappa'ai_ engaged, backlighting him in a manner worthy of any dramatic entrance. The appreciative murmur of the villagers rustled through the clearing.

More importantly - at least to Teal'c - no Asgardian transporter beam washed over him. O'Neill surveyed the clearing, met Teal'c's eye and gave him a nod. Meanwhile, Major Carter was talking to the young woman beside her in a low voice. From the look of it, she was giving some kind of warning. Probably against the young woman trying to dial the Earth address and coming through. The villager was listening earnestly, and Teal'c approved of both Major Carter's thoughtfulness and the young woman's intensity. It was well to travel through the chappa'ai, but also necessary to be cautious. There were many dangers out there, even apart from the threat of the Goa'uld.

He did not pay attention to Daniel Jackson's speech, and so was a little started by the cheering that followed it at the end. These people, indeed, put much faith in their prophecy.

It took a while to get Daniel Jackson up the stairs - everyone wished to touch him, to say a word, to look him in the eye. In the end, O'Neill was muttering into his radio unit, most likely informing the SGC why they were taking so long, and his, "Daniel! Time's a-wasting," was what finally broke up the fervent farewells.

Teal'c followed his team-mates up the stairs, watched as O'Neill went through with Daniel Jackson, then paused by Samantha Carter. "You gave her the address?"

"I did. Are you sure you know what you're doing, Teal'c? I mean, the universe isn't always a safe place."

"Not everyone desires to be safe."

"I guess that's true." Major Carter glanced back once, then stepped through.

Teal'c met the eye of the young woman to whom Major Carter gave the keys to a kind of freedom - freedom from the expectations of her village, hopefully to be shared with others. He nodded at her in acknowledgedment and stepped through the Chappa'ai, returning home.


End file.
